On Thursday Stage 5 of the Tour of Britain made it's way up Caerphilly Mountain. Twice.
The Melodeon Master and I donned our wet gear and set off for the summit - we followed the crowds up to the top, the Melodeon Master carrying even more wet gear in our rucksack and pushing his mountain bike, and me cycling a bit and walking a bit. I cycled the last part of the mountain in front of sizeable crowds - they cheered me on and rang cow bells which was BRILLIANT! I didn't dare stop and disappoint them...
We parked the bikes on a nice soft looking bit of mountain, found our vantage point and watched the clouds clear and the sky turn blue...
There were thousands of people up there...
The space for the cyclists (which was tiny) is between the guy in the orange T shirt and the RIGHT of the photo - barely any room at all.
Fit Mark was unable to be on the mountain top as he was stuck at work about 3 miles away, so he kept us up to date with texts as to where the race was:
Just come through Bargoed...
Still in Ystrad Mynach. Breakaway now only 1 min up...
Just about to pass Asda. Break at 18s...
At the Castle...
10s...
Just passed the Wimpy, all back together...
And then the helicopter was overhead, the cars (and 15 motorbike outriders - 15!!) were coming through the tiny gap, and then the cyclists. I was enormously relieved to see that they weren't just cycling happily up the mountain - which was variously described in the press as 'ferocious' and 'one of the toughest climbs' - but they did look like it had been tough.
Then down the other side - at 60kph - round the castle and back up.
On the second time up the mountain Dan Martin was in front and he was FLYING - I have absolutely no idea how anyone can go up it that fast. He was caught on the way down and Sam Bennett won the stage. Once the Tour had gone through (which took a while as they were incredibly spread out the second time) we grabbed our bikes and headed down the hill to the finish, although it had long since finished by the time we got there, slightly slower than we intended partly due to the crowds and partly due to the Melodeon Master's brakes being locked on (unintentionally - they're now being 'bled' at the bike shop).
We watched the presentations but really couldn't see much due to the enormous crowds... We'd recorded it live on the TV so once we'd cycled home we made a cuppa and sat and watched all of it.
Brilliant.
And the Amateur attempt...
This morning I had another crack at Caerphilly Mountain on my road bike. Last time I stopped at the Yellow House and had to walk a bit as I couldn't get started again. This time I was past that and going well although a little wobbly. I could hear cars behind me, I was on a bend and there were double white lines so I wimped out and stopped rather than wobble into the path of a car... The hill was so steep that I had to hang on to my brake to stop the bike rolling back. Once they'd gone past I managed to get going straight away and then I was fine all the way to the top - yay!
I think the training might be paying off...
No comments:
Post a Comment